. Psychology in daily life. thefact that, although appreciably diminished inforce by knowledge of its nature, the illusion per-sists and remains irrepressible for all normal per-sons, no matter how long or how frequently theyregard it. Even the few variants of the figuresshown suffice to suggest that we do not have far togo to find unit of direction figures, as in prints onfabrics, in pictorial art, or in natural objects. THE SILK HAT: ILLUSIONS OF SIZE A visitor in the psychological laboratory askedwhy it is that a silk hat looks so much taller than itreally is. The psychologist repHed, Let u
. Psychology in daily life. thefact that, although appreciably diminished inforce by knowledge of its nature, the illusion per-sists and remains irrepressible for all normal per-sons, no matter how long or how frequently theyregard it. Even the few variants of the figuresshown suffice to suggest that we do not have far togo to find unit of direction figures, as in prints onfabrics, in pictorial art, or in natural objects. THE SILK HAT: ILLUSIONS OF SIZE A visitor in the psychological laboratory askedwhy it is that a silk hat looks so much taller than itreally is. The psychologist repHed, Let us seewhether or not it does. The persons present wereasked to agree upon a height to which the hatwould correspond if it were placed against the wallon the window sill. A point was agreed upon and, 163 PSYCHOLOGY IN DAILY LIFE when the hat was set up, it fell short of the markby fully twenty-five per cent of its actual height;that is, they had judged the hat to be higher thanit really was. They were then asked to judge in-. FiG. i8 dividually the ratio of the height to the diameter,the diameter being arbitrarily considered ten units,for convenience. The judgment on height rangedfrom twelve to sixteen units, but measurementshowed that the two dimensions were exactly confirmed the first observation. Thus wasdemonstrated in a new sense that much of the im-pression made by the silk hat is mere appearance. In Fig. i8 the greatest height (front) of thecylinder is equal to the smallest diameter of the top 164 LAW IN ILLUSION of the crown. The height looks to be about one-fourth greater than the diameter. This incident was recognized as a good startingpoint for an investigation. A student took up theproblem and made a very extensive series of quali-tative and quantitative experiments which requiredyears of work and resulted in a valuable contribu-tion to the science of psychology.^ In making measurements we must analyze thesituation into its simplest elements and proceed in-
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectpsychology, bookyear1
